Gudbrandur Vigfússon

Gudbrandur Vigfússon, (born March 13, 1827, Dalasýsla, Ice.—died Jan. 31, 1889, Oxford) one of the 19th century’s foremost scholars of Old Norse, who completed the Richard Cleasby Icelandic–English Dictionary (1874; 2nd ed., 1957) and published editions of a number of Icelandic sagas as well as the collection Corpus poeticum boreale (1883; “Body of Northern Poetry”).

Vigfússon studied in Iceland and at the University of Copenhagen but took no degree. As a research fellow at Copenhagen (1854–64), Vigfússon published his first work, the Timatel (1855), a brilliant attempt at establishing the chronologies of the Icelandic family sagas, followed by editions of Icelandic ... (100 of 222 words)